Iran continues its campaign against the press

March 29, 2012 11:08 AM ET

New
York, March 29, 2012--Iranian authorities have imprisoned two additional
journalists as part of their three-year-long crackdown on the press, according
to news reports. In addition, the BBC reported that its Web services had been
targeted by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which the broadcaster
believed originated from the Iranian regime.

"Iranian authorities are using all
manner of tactics, many of them brutal, to silence critical journalists, but
news of the regime's sustained oppression continues to reach the world," said
Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.
"It is time for Iran to end this indefinite crackdown and allow independent
voices to be heard."

Iranian legal proceedings are
marked by secrecy, but word of the two new detentions emerged in recent news
reports. Security forces arrested Tahmineh Monzavi, an award-winning freelance
photographer, at her workplace in the capital, Tehran, on February 19, and
searched her home, reformist news websites said. The journalist has documented sensitive social issues in
the country like homelessness and drug addiction. Authorities did not disclose
her whereabouts, legal status, or health condition.

Nazanin Khosravani, a political
columnist for several now-banned
reformist newspapers, was summoned to Tehran's Evin Prison in early
March to serve the six-year prison term she was handed in February 2011 on
charges of "assembly and collusion against national security" and "propagating
against the regime," according to news reports. Khosravani was arrested in November 2010 and spent 132 days in prison with much of
her time in solitary confinement, the reports said.

Also this month, the BBC was targeted by a "sophisticated
cyber-attack" that caused disruptions in its email and Internet services, the
broadcaster reported. The BBC's
director general, Mark Thompson, said the Internet attack "coincided with
efforts to jam two of the service's satellite feeds into Iran." The regime has
targeted the BBC Persian-language service in the past by jamming its satellite
signal and arresting and harassing relatives of its staff members in Iran, CPJ
research shows.

The health of several Iranian
journalists has also deteriorated in prison.

Mohammad
Davari, a journalist who was sentenced in 2010 to
five years in prison on antistate charges, developed an acute psychological
illness and suffered from chest pains, his brother told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI)
in March.

Kayvan Samimi, a journalist jailed
since 2009 on antistate charges, was hospitalized in early March with liver complications, Iran's Committee of Human Rights Reporters said.

In early February, a
Revolutionary Court judge refused a furlough request for online journalist
Hossein Ronaghi Maleki to seek medical treatment for a kidney disease he
developed in prison, reformist news websites said.
Maleki was sentenced in 2010 to 15 years in prison on antistate charges.

The wife of Ehsan Houshmand, a
journalist who was arrested in early January and accused of "propagating against the
regime," told the ICHRI in March that she had not been allowed to visit
her husband in Evin Prison and that he had told her on the phone that he
suffered from ear, knee, and leg aches and that his requests to go to the
infirmary were ignored.

Iran has maintained a
revolving-door policy for imprisoning journalists, freeing some detainees on
furloughs even as they make new arrests. When CPJ conducted its annual
prison census
on December 1, 2011, Iran was holding 42 journalists in custody, the most in
the world.

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